


blackened earth, or whatever

by jesimiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Smoking, Temporary Character Death, The Buried - Freeform, The Corruption, The Desolation, The Eye, anyway i did use my "get attached to one statement giver free" card on jordan kennedy, its not like. blood and gore but you know, post-160, the gdov tag is because someone gets explicitly set on fire, the homoerotic tension between a corruption avatar and the exterminator that sets him on fire :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesimiel/pseuds/jesimiel
Summary: after the world ends, there is a house, on what was once, maybe, at one time, the street that jordan kennedy lived on, with a man in a brown suit sitting on the porch.“do i know you?” asks the man, like he already knows the answer.
Relationships: Jordan Kennedy/John Amherst
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	blackened earth, or whatever

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr [here](http://primalreversion.tumblr.com) or [here.](http://jamherst.tumblr.com) follow my best friend kieran, who is an indisposable source of inspiration for me, [here.](http://wisharcher.tumblr.com)

after the world ends, there is a house, on what was once, maybe, at one time, the street that jordan kennedy lived on, with a man in a brown suit sitting on the porch.

“do i know you?” asks the man, like he already knows the answer, which jordan is sure is the case.

“yes,” says jordan shortly. the man nods, before sitting up a bit straighter. jordan tenses, but the man doesn’t rise—simply reaches a hand into the inside of his jacket and retrieves a solitary dusty cigarette.

“oh, _pest_ control,” the man says, inspecting the cigarette thoughtfully, as though confirming his recollection. “kennedy?” 

“jordan,” he replies. the man nods again in recognition.

“amherst,” says the man with an easy smile, transferring the cigarette to his other hand. “john.”

jordan says nothing.

“do you have a light?” john amherst asks. jordan nods stiffly, pulling his lighter from the pocket of his jeans. he holds it out at arm’s length, and doesn’t flick it on.

“d’you mind tossing it over? had a bit of, uh, bad experience with that thing the last time we met.” 

jordan does. john catches it, the motion smoothly transitioning into the raising of his arm to the end of his cigarette, the press of his thumb to turn the lighter on, the little flick of his wrist to extinguish the tiny flame. rather than tossing the lighter back, he pockets it. “thanks.”

jordan tries very hard not to narrow his eyes in frustration, and only barely succeeds.

“what do you want.” it isn’t much of a question, ground out between his irritated teeth. john shrugs, taking a long drag of his cigarette.

“i don’t know. i didn’t even know you would be here, to be honest. you don’t seem much for, uh, all of _this_.”

he gestures behind him without turning around, indicating the massive hole in the earth that swallows the asphalt just a few houses down from the one john and jordan are in front of. from within it, the sounds of the churning buried are muffled, but jordan is sure if he were in the pit the noise would be deafening, crushing, claustrophobic. 

it’s his turn to shrug now, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. it’s difficult, a bit, with the gloves—and he always wears gloves, now. “i’m not.”

john waves the cigarette impatiently. “not _that_ , that. not the _buried_. i mean, all of _this_ in general. in the, uh, abstract sense.”

“what do you mean?”

again, john shrugs. “you just seem sort of… well, you’re a bit _nervous_ , but you’re… uh, down-to-earth, i suppose. you’re quite grounded in realism. helps in your job, i’d imagine.”

jordan blinks. he’s not… _wrong_ , he supposes, but he’s never been described that way before. “i mean, i—“

“yeah, i know about the section 31,” says john, putting the cigarette back to his lips and looking off to the side. he’s misinterpreting jordan’s stuttering, but jordan isn’t going to correct him. “sorry about that, for what it’s worth. signing a bunch of forms seems like hell to pay for, just—meeting me, getting rid of the girl’s _nest_. i’ve heard it’s, uh, a mess of red tape.”

“did you know her? jane prentiss, i mean.” 

“yes and no,” says john, somewhat evasively. “i knew when you burnt her, though.” he sounds almost... sad, as though he misses her. 

jordan sits down, then, on the chair on the opposite side of the porch. he doesn’t know whose house this is, but neither of them particularly care. john looks moderately surprised, for a sliver of a second, before extracting another cigarette from inside his jacket and holding it out wordlessly to jordan.

jordan looks at it, for a moment, and considers. he reaches out, stretches his arm as far as it can go, and takes it. “gonna need my lighter back.”

john nods in concession, fishing it out of his pocket and flipping it back to jordan, who fumbles with it just barely before securely catching it. john cracks a smile.

jordan lights his cigarette, putting his lighter in his pocket (his jacket pocket, this time, so his hand is on it, as habit dictates) and lifting the cigarette to his mouth. it… _seems_ normal, _smells_ normal, and while he doesn’t trust _john_ , he supposes he does trust his cigarettes, and takes a drag from it quickly, before it fizzles out.

they sit in silence for a long while. john chain-smokes. he puts out three more cigarettes in the time it takes jordan to finish one, tossing jordan’s lighter back and forth between them. the noises from the massive sinkhole two hundred meters behind them ebb and flow until jordan can hardly distinguish it from the ever-present background hum-buzz of panicked stranger-screams and hunt-howls and slaughter-song.

“so,” jordan asks again, when john crushes the stub of his fourth cigarette beneath the heel of his dirt-smeared dress shoe. “what do you want?”

“do i have to _want_ anything?”

“i mean, your type usually do, in my experience.”

“ _my_ type,” snorts john. he makes a motion for another cigarette before apparently thinking better of it and letting his jacket fall closed again. “what’s _my_ type?”

jordan pauses. “dunno. uh, _avatars_ , i guess. is that the word for it?”

john tilts his head from side to side. “mmm, it depends on who you talk to. never had the occasion to refer to _myself_ as that, but i’ve no doubt that _some_ do. magnus and his lot used to use that word.”

jordan only vaguely knows who he’s talking about, but doesn’t comment on it. instead he crosses his arms over his chest, leaning forwards in his seat. “so. _do_ you want something?”

“yes,” the answer comes immediately. 

“well, what is it?”

“i want to kill you,” john says, very matter-of-factly. 

jordan reels back, dumbfounded. “you want to— _why?_ for what? revenge?"

john gestures vaguely with his hand. “sure, you can call it that. it’d be more accurate to say it’s because you’re _too_ rational, honestly, though.”

“what do you—“

“look,” says john, his voice suddenly as hard as concrete. “you _know_ what powers this apocalypse, i’m sure. what feeds the eye in the sky. what keeps the lights on in that panopticon.”

“fear,” says jordan—it’s a bit of a guess, but he knows it’s right, somehow. 

john nods. “yes. and _you’re_ not scared.”

jordan considers that for a moment. not scared. he’s certainly _wary_ of everything, certainly nervous and _uneasy_ —but no, he realizes, he _isn’t_ scared. and he _especially_ isn’t scared of john amherst, anymore.

“and if you’re not _scared_ , then you’re _useless_. to the _eye_ , to _magnus_ , and to _me._ ” the words fire themselves from john like they’re burning him. 

“and what makes _you_ useful?” jordan asks, miraculously managing to keep his voice nonchalant. “what are _you_ scared of?”

john tilts his head to the side again, looking at jordan out of the corners of his eyes, and goes dead silent. in the almost-quiet, the anguish of the masses in the earthen pit seem three times as loud. “take a guess.”

again, jordan says nothing.

john smiles again, and this time it’s tight and mirthless. “do you think it will stop following me, if i feed _you_ to it?” 

“i don’t know,” says jordan, quietly, honestly. 

everything moves very quickly, for a moment, after that, an eternity of action in an instant—john leaps to his feet, and so does jordan, and john lunges forward across the wooden deck, and jordan tries to duck away but he’s too slow, too _slow_ , and then they twist to the side and john has jordan pinned against the door to the house, the rusty doorknob digging painfully into his side.

“maybe it _is_ revenge, a little bit,” says john lowly, hands against the splintering wood of the door on either side of jordan’s head, caging him in with his arms. he’s taller up close, with a good six inches on jordan that serve him well on the intimidation front—but still, jordan isn’t scared. “not a _fan_ of getting lit on _fire_.”

“most aren’t,” says jordan, for lack of anything else. john tilts his head slightly down and jordan tilts his head slightly up so that their eyes can meet, jordan’s back against the door and john’s shoulders tense with anger. they are very, very close together.

“i’m _not_ going to kill you,” grits out john, “i’m going to do you _worse_ —i’m going to feed you to the _pit_. you’ll live forever, you know, _compressed_ and _crushed_ and _choking_ , and then, once i’ve given it _something_ in exchange, it will leave—me— _alone_.” he punctuates every other word with a slam of his hand on the door at jordan’s head level, but jordan doesn’t flinch. 

“thanks,” he says instead.

“wh—for _what?_ ” john sputters in confusion.

“for getting close enough for me to reach you.” and jordan kennedy smiles, showing his teeth, and then, and only then, does john register how _warm_ he is. how his eyes widen, alight with searing flame. how his even, unconcerned breath feels like the air from an incinerator, too _hot_ , like blowtorched metal, like volcanic magma, like gasoline and charcoal and _fire_ , like—

like desolation.

“ _what—_ ” john chokes out, drawing back, but it’s jordan’s turn to be fast, now, and john’s regretting leaving jordan’s arms unpinned because he pulls off his gloves in a practiced dual motion and then john is falling to his knees, feeling the singe of jordan’s skin even through his clothing as it touches his stomach, his chest, his shoulders.

"we’re all aligned with something or other,” mumbles jordan, following him down to kneel on the wooden floor of the porch, moving his hands up to cup john’s face between them. john hisses at the feeling, his skin reddening and then blistering from the heat, teeny droplets of melted wax running down john’s neck and onto jordan’s sleeves, dripping down onto the whitewashed planks. the collar of john’s shirt begins to smolder.

“no, _no_ —“ john gasps in pain as jordan’s thumbs press hot prints into his cheekbone. there’s that _smell_ again, the smoke of things corrupted, thick and disgusting, almost choking jordan from the proximity, but he does not let go. “ _please_ —“

for the third time, jordan says nothing, john's sudden rush of fear fanning his lightless flame. 

he has the odd feeling that it would be very satisfying, in some sort of cosmic narrative that he doesn’t understand, to kiss john—as though it would complete a loop, something far out of both their sights—and so he does, harsh and hard.

john makes a noise into jordan’s mouth that might have tried to be a surprised yell but is quickly replaced by a sound of pleasure, which itself is soon swallowed by a wail of renewed pain as the hot-coal feeling multiplies tenfold. he removes his hands from their vice hold on jordan’s wrists to settle on his shoulders in a strange parody of a loving embrace, his own skin burning with fever and flame. jordan tightens his grip, digging in his nails, pouring all his heat into john, moving one hand into his hair (forgoing the flame entirely, simply scorching it to brittle strands of ash) and pressing the other flat against his chest (searing a cigarette-burn hole through the fabric, liquid wax rolling in rivulets down the newly-exposed skin). 

jordan’s hands are steady and his breath is still measured and calm, his open eyes like lithium matches, even as john writhes in his scalding grip. his mouth and hands press closer, harder, _hotter_ , until his head is full of that oily sickness-smell and john’s head falls back, angry red handprints pressed into the sides of his face, the peeling skin around the edges charred to blackness, limp and lifeless and finally, _finally_ burnt out.

jordan stands up. he tilts john’s body to the side, letting him sprawl out over the wood, the last of the hardening wax dripping sluggishly. jordan’s shoes scuff the floor, scattering the blackened soot that surrounds the two of them. 

he reaches down, into john’s jacket, and retrieves a cigarette. he sits down in john's vacated chair, on the left side of the porch. he puts the cigarette in his mouth, lights it with the tip of his finger, and does not draw his gloves back on.

he knows that john will be back, eventually, good as new and probably four times angrier, though he isn’t quite sure _how_ he knows that (and at this, he gives a glare to the eye watching him from where the moon used to be—it’s a familiar shade of green that he’s used to seeing in his dreams), and so he waits. and waits. and waits. 

eventually, after an undeterminable length of time, john’s hand twitches. the burnt skin begins to heal, slowly, slowly. 

they'll do it all again, jordan supposes. the little song and dance. for however long they care to. neither of them have much of anything better to do.

a mumbled curse leaves john's mouth, and he blinks once, twice. 

jordan takes another drag of his cigarette. smoke curls from both his mouth and the armrest of the chair, the old wood smoldering beneath his skin. in the distance, the agonized screams of the buried’s victims almost sound like laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not sure if my enjoyment of writing comes from depicting situations that nobody else would ever think of, or if i just really like to write about fuckoff weird shit. i think about jack and agnes a lot. 
> 
> inspired by these episodes of the podcast: [x](https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/055.html) | [x](https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/067.html) | [x](https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/097.html) | [x](https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/157.html)


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